Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to engineering design and, more specifically, to an approach for generating and exploring a design space.
Description of the Related Art
In a typical engineering workflow, an engineer uses a computer-aided design (CAD) tool to generate three-dimensional (3D) geometry that solves a design problem. In doing so, the engineer typically makes design choices in accordance with a set of design criteria. For example, in the design of an airplane wing, one design objective could be that the airplane wing must provide at least a minimum amount of lift. One design constraint could be that the airplane wing must not be subjected to greater than a maximum amount of stress in a given direction. In order to best meet the design criteria, an engineer oftentimes creates multiple design options that may or may not meet the design criteria. Then, the engineer manually analyzes and compares those different design options to determine which option best fits the design criteria.
One drawback of the above approach is that conventional CAD tools allow engineers to consider only one design option at a time. Thus, engineers using such tools typically have difficulty analyzing and comparing similar design options. Among other things, with conventional CAD tools, an engineer has to toggle or switch back and forth between similar design options, making nuanced differences between those design options difficult to detect and/or determine.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a more effective approach for analyzing and comparing design options in an engineering workflow.